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Overview
Brooke O’Connor—elegant, self-possessed, and kind—has a happy marriage and a deeply loved young daughter. So her adamant refusal to have a second child confounds her husband, Sean. When Brooke’s high school boyfriend Alex—now divorced and mourning the death of his young son—unexpectedly resurfaces, Sean begins to suspect an affair.
For fifteen years Brooke has kept a shameful secret from everyone she loves. Only Alex knows the truth that drove them apart. His reappearance now threatens the life she has so carefully constructed and fortified by denial. With her marriage—and her emotional equilibrium—at stake, Brooke must confront what she has been unwilling to face for so long.
But the truth is not what Brooke believes it to be.
Lucy Ferriss’s haunting novel reveals the profound ways in which remorse over the past can not only derail lives but also—sometimes—redeem them.
Synopsis
Brooke O’Connor—elegant, self-possessed, and kind—has a happy marriage and a deeply loved young daughter. So her adamant refusal to have a second child confounds her husband, Sean. When Brooke’s high school boyfriend Alex—now divorced and mourning the death of his young son—unexpectedly resurfaces, Sean begins to suspect an affair.For fifteen years Brooke has kept a shameful secret from everyone she loves. Only Alex knows the truth that drove them apart. His reappearance now threatens the life she has so carefully constructed and fortified by denial. With her marriage—and her emotional equilibrium—at stake, Brooke must confront what she has been unwilling to face for so long.
But the truth is not what Brooke believes it to be.
Lucy Ferriss’s haunting novel reveals the profound ways in which remorse over the past can not only derail lives but also—sometimes—redeem them.
Editorials
Wally Lamb
“From its harrowing prologue to its final sentences, I was emotionally engaged.”
Tom Perotta
“A complex, engaging novel about guilt, secrecy, and the mysteries of family…a courageous and thought-provoking writer.”
The RT Book Reviews Magazine
Ferriss' latest is a deeply emotional book with lyrical writing. It is a modern story with deep underlayers, making it more meaningful than just a light read. The characters, deeply flawed but very human, draw you in.They're making choices blindly, since they never can see the future clearly, and then they must live with the results as they come.
Kirkus Reviews
A child left for dead at birth reappears 15 years later to transform the lives of her parents. The opening pages of Ferriss' sixth novel (Leaving the Neighborhood, 2001, etc.) are a harrowing overture to a book that's soaked with domestic tension. In 1993, Brooke and her boyfriend, Alex, enter a motel to deliver what the high-schoolers are certain will be a stillbirth; the teas prescribed by a hippie-ish family friend of Brooke's were supposed to ensure that. The first chapter's visceral depiction of the delivery signals that Ferriss intends to deliver an unflinching study of parenthood, and though the book is overlong and takes some sentimental turns, she largely follows through on that promise. Fifteen years later, Brooke has married another man, Sean, with whom she has a daughter, and their life is outwardly cozy. But Sean's job at a print shop is foundering and she's batting away his pleas for another child. As Sean drowns his anger in drink, Brooke reconnects with Alex, who can't stop hating himself over their parental misadventure. After a series of revelations, the two discover that their child is alive: Alex left her breathing in a crate near the motel's dumpster, where she was taken in by a working-class Polish-immigrant family. The girl, Najda, has a severe physical disability but is whip-smart; among the novel's sharpest chapters are those she narrates, full of close observations of her dysfunctional adoptive family and guilt-wracked biological one. Ferriss' main message is that the truth will always come out, and she often gives this fairly preposterous scenario a convincing, Franzen-style realism. That skill is undercut slightly by a second message that dreams do come true; Ferriss is no Pollyanna, but she ties the bow in ways that feel more comforting than sincere. Despite some too-convenient plot twists, a powerful domestic novel.Booklist
BooklistFerriss moves the plot along at a fast clip, deftly weaving together recollections of the past and, as the disturbing truth of Brooke's secret slowly emerges, the present. All the while, Ferriss infuses the story with a heady dose of realism. Financial crisis looms as businesses close, workers get laid off, and consultants are brought in to "streamline." Lost Daughter manages to be a romantic family novel with a palpable atmosphere of impending calamity. Sure, there's a happy ending, but that doesn't mean everything's right in the world.